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Robot News: Rovio Mobile Telepresence « Robot Vacuum Cleaner. Windoro Window-Cleaning Robot Demo. In our best robots of CES roundup last week, it appears that we left out an interesting offering: the Windoro window-cleaning robot from South Korea.

Windoro Window-Cleaning Robot Demo

That's right. This robot wants to do for your windows what Roomba and Scooba do for your floors. It's quite a sight to see this gizmo magically crawling on glass. But there's no magic, of course. There's magnetism. Watch how it works: The mighty iRobot, with its best-selling Roomba vacuums and innovative Scooba floor-washing bots, dominates the cleaning-robot market. Unveiled late last year, the Windoro robot was a joint development between Ilshim and the Pohang Institute of Intelligent Robotics, or PIRO.

The Windoro robot can clean windows 6 to 25 millimeters thick (0.2 to 1 inch). One of the robot's two modules works as the navigation unit. The robot first moves up and down and left and right to determine the dimensions of the window. UPDATE 1/19: Corrected maximum surface area robot can clean. Windoro Window-Cleaning Robot Demo. iRobot Scooba 230: How It Works. I would love to have a Scooba, iRobot's floor-washing robot, to keep my kitchen and bathroom shining.

iRobot Scooba 230: How It Works

But for my New York City-sized dwelling (read: tiny cramped apartment), the rotund robot is an overkill -- it could probably clean the entire bathroom floor just by spinning in place. It appears that iRobot heard the same complaint from many people and decided to shrink the Scooba. The new Scooba 230, unveiled at CES, is about the same height but only half the diameter of the original Scooba 300 series [see photo above]. At 16 centimeters in diameter (6.5 inches) and 9 centimeters tall (3.5 inches), the new Scooba can get into small areas such as that dreaded space around the toilet. Like the original models, the shrunken Scooba uses a three-stage cleaning approach: first, it deposits water or a cleaning solution on the floor; then it uses scrubbing brushes to lose dirt and grime; finally, a squeegee vacuum removes the dirty water.

iRobot Scooba 230: How It Works. You Definitely Need a Robotic Spy Vacuum. Before you dismiss this as just another Asian knockoff not-quite-a-Roomba, just take a minute to think about how the Samsung Tango View could change your life for the better.

You Definitely Need a Robotic Spy Vacuum

In addition to sporting a sophisticated visual mapping feature, the Tango is equipped with a camera, spotlights (!) , and a microphone. It's Wi-Fi enabled, meaning that you can access the vacuum over the internet, and when you do, you're presented with a live view from the robot, complete with supplemental lighting and what could be two-way audio (although it's hard to tell). You can pilot it around manually, making sure that the oven is off, the fridge door is closed, and that nobody has broken into your house and stolen your fancy vacuum robot.

You can also duct-tape a yardstick to it and use it to program your VCR while you're away. One oft-overlooked aspect to the Tango is that it clearly hits it off with the ladies. Samsung's Tango View (specifically the VC-RL87W) is available in Korea for about $700. Litter Robot. Litter Robot is a self-cleaning litter box for cats that uses a rotating globe to sift the clumps from the clean cat litter.

Litter Robot

It has been engineered to solve many of the problems associated with early automatic litter box designs. Rake type boxes can get stuck on a clump and either burn out the motor, or fling the clump across the room. The rolling action of the Litter Robot globe let the clumps sift themselves from the litter bed and drop into a sealed drawer at the base. This lowers the stress on the motor, and does not depend on the motor power to remove the clumps.

Many automatic litter boxes rely on special litter or containers to work properly. Many early boxes did not have a warning system, and would activate while the cat was using their box. The design is self-correcting for many mistakes the user can make. Once the cat exits the globe, a seven minute countdown waits for the clumping action of the litter to take place. History[edit] Advantages[edit] Disadvantages[edit]

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